Britain's WW2 Propaganda War on America

Just weeks after German bombers began their nightly raids on London in September 1940, Warner Brothers released to American theaters a quietly powerful 10-minute documentary, London Can Take It! Narrated by Quentin Reynolds, an American war correspondent for Collier's Weekly, the film focuses on ordinary Londoners' everyday stoicism under fire. Over Reynolds's low-key, unemotional voice appear images of men, women, and children going about their daily lives, walking to work past mountains of debris, nonchalantly sweeping the glass out of broken shop windows, manning fire hoses and air-raid posts at night amid the flash of antiaircraft fire and the thunder of falling bombs. "These are not Hollywood sound effects," Reynolds drawls in a hushed monotone. "This is the music they play every night in London. The symphony of war."